


Being Only Human and Other Desperate Conditions

by PaksenarrionReader



Series: Reader does Overtrash [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Lemon Tea, Not At The Same Time Though, Widowtracer, as per usual it will be Difficult to find straight people in this, basically laying the groundwork for a deeper dive into the fandom, bits of this may be nsfw, displays of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:20:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12941022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaksenarrionReader/pseuds/PaksenarrionReader
Summary: What happens when an unstoppable force (Tracer's faith in people and herself) meets an immovable object (Widowmaker's disillusioned cynism)?





	Being Only Human and Other Desperate Conditions

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is the first thing I've ever written within the Overwatch 'verse — about a month before finally succumbing and buying the game — another contest entry, and something I'm still a little proud of. Turns out, I have Thoughts, and seeing as I needed a break from writing Sailor Moon for personal reasons, I'm more than happy to stay in the Overtrash heap for a little. Backdated to original publish date, though I have fixed it up a little since then. Enjoy!

There were nights, unsurprisingly, when Tracer dreamt of the endless abyss of time, of being lost in her own personal hell again, of being tossed about by the bright blue currents with no way to tell what she would see next, where she would haunt next. These were the nights, just as unsurprisingly, when Tracer would bolt up into a sit and wake up to the sound of her own screaming.

And, as Murphy’s law would have it, she would be spending one of those nights with Amélie.

She was up and ready to attack before Tracer had even ran out of breath, her golden eyes bleary but wide open, modesty forgone as her hand had fallen to a combat knife instead of clothes still strewn on the floor. That she didn’t have to use it seemed more unexpected to her than seeing Tracer pale as a sheet and panting, frantically clawing at her own chest to make sure her chronal accelerator was safely in place, and tearing up in relief upon finding it there. Only then had she looked up to find Amélie staring at her. Wary. Waiting.

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you— Nightmare. Had a bad dream, is all. I’ll— I’ll go, let you sleep in peace—” Tracer ceased her broken up explanations when Amélie tossed the knife to the floor and placed that hand on Tracer’s shoulder.

“I don’t recall saying you could leave, ma chérie.”

Tracer only had the time to stare at her, dumbfounded, before Amélie leaned in to kiss her, forcefully and deeply, stealing Lena’s breath and blasting all thoughts out of her mind. Without any particular input from Tracer’s brain, her hands found their way to Amélie’s waist, held her a little closer when Amélie shoved Tracer’s shoulder to push her onto her back again and slide a thigh between Tracer’s legs. She opened her eyes when Amélie’s hand gripped her chin and tilted it down a little, to make Tracer look up—to make her feel smaller—right into eyes of liquid gold, eyes harder than steel.

“Think only of me now.”

“Not like you make that hard, love—” Tracer broke off with a whimper when Amélie’s lips moved to her ear, turned her head to the side to make things easier for her, and was rewarded by fingertips skimming lightly down her throat and lower, around the chronal accelerator’s frame.

She had to beg that night, and beg she did, extensively and for quite a while, she might add. When she was finally given the pleasure that Amélie had been coaxing her towards, she was so worn out that all she could do was turn to her side, trying to give her back a break, and sling an arm around Amélie’s midriff in a sloppy attempt at preventing her from leaving right away.

The last thing she expected was to be held, but it was where she found herself—one of Amélie’s arms loosely around her back and a hand threading through her choppy brown hair, cradling her head to Amélie’s chest, where Tracer could hear her eerily slow heartbeat. Though unexpected, it was by no means unwelcome, and Tracer shifted to fit into the embrace a little more snugly, wrapped the blanket’s edge around her lover’s shoulders; she felt Amélie’s chin rest atop her head, and heard her sigh with neither irritation nor resignation.

Her skin was always cool against Tracer’s, not enough for it to be a significant discomfort, but well over enough to be noticeable. It would be a great thing if she ever had a fever, Tracer thought lazily as she drifted off, no need for a cool compress if she could just put Amélie’s hand on her forehead instead.

She had still been there when Tracer woke up the next morning, which was not a common occurrence, not common at all.

And ever since that night, Tracer had wondered whether Amélie, too, had dreams that prevented her from sleeping, that had her waking up drenched in cold sweat. She’d never made a scene as spectacular as Tracer’s nightmare had performed for her, and for a while, Tracer was half-certain there was no room anymore for trivialities like remorse, shame, guilt, or fear in Widowmaker’s slow-beating heart.

That was before she had noticed that every now and then, Amélie would kiss her more forcefully, allow Tracer more agency, burrow an arm under Tracer’s shoulders to hold onto her, and every breathless _faster_ or _more_ she moaned into Tracer’s ear would sound like a request instead of a demand as she pulled tight around Tracer’s fingers. And sometimes, sometimes, she would even stay the night.

In other words, every now and then Amélie would take comfort in the same way she had given on the night when Tracer woke up screaming in her arms.

Maybe, Amélie’s nightmares only went to sleep when she did.

Tracer had tried so hard, for so long, to understand more about her, and knew that Amélie was doing her best to understand more about Tracer, too. For a while, it looked promising. But it was so taxing—and in the long run, nothing ever changed. And not even Tracer could, in the long run, hold out hope for saving someone who just would not be saved.

It would be so much easier to only think of her as Widowmaker, now. But Tracer took care to remind herself that she hadn’t always been Widowmaker, and wasn’t fated to remain Widowmaker forever.

Maybe, someday, someone would reach Amélie Lacroix and hold her hand while she saved herself from her own choices. But Lena Oxton, callsign Tracer, wasn’t able to be that person.

~*~

It did not come off as a surprise.

There was always going to be a limit to how long Lena could defy her conscience and keep committing treason against her teammates. From the moment she had seen the determination in her eyes—instead of the usual thrill, fascination, anticipation—Widowmaker knew what she was going to hear.

It stung, yes, but by no means was it a surprise. Not even the calm way in which Lena had announced it, as if half-expecting Widowmaker to kill her for it, and prepared to face her death with her head held high and her conscience finally clean. Not even how, in the words she had half-expected to be her last, she had apologized for having wasted Widowmaker’s time.

She hadn’t killed Tracer. She hadn’t fought Tracer. She had simply inclined her head to Lena, as much in agreement as in respect, then turned on her heel and left.

Lena was not the only one who came prepared. Widowmaker had always come prepared.

It was not a surprise, but it did leave her bereft. Lena was always warm against her, both body and soul, the warmth of her freckled skin seeping into Widowmaker’s hands and lips, the unbelievably resilient cheerfulness striking sparks against the flint of Widowmaker’s professional detachment. And despite Widowmaker having repeatedly insulted her as such, Lena was not a fool—she had suffered like few have ever suffered, and did not put any faith into an inherent goodness of the world. Lena’s cheer and bubbly optimism were as much of a choice as Widowmaker’s every action since the passing of the late Gérard Lacroix.

At first, it had made Lena interesting. How long would her breaking take? How loudly would her fall echo? Widowmaker had hunted Tracer down like an exhilarating prey, only to find that greater forces had attempted to break Lena Oxton before and, ultimately, failed. Then Widowmaker fought Tracer like a worthy opponent, an equal, both of them rare gemstones formed with the pressure of standing by their choices, choices that had the world itself beating down on them with all of its might. They had both refused to break and stood by their decisions, and stood by them always.

And in the end, Widowmaker found herself enthralled to the point of engaging in this—pointlessness.

In the end, she found herself drawn to Lena’s warmth, craving more and more of it, no matter how much she could have. And she found that for every time she had warmed herself against Lena’s skin and personality, there would be that much less warmth left inside Lena.

And for so long, Widowmaker had tried to make Lena want to keep coming back. All of her knowledge and skill, she poured into this effort. But she had never allowed herself to forget that no matter how heavily she clouded Lena’s eyes with fascination and hope, she was the one drawn to her warmth like a moth to the flame.

It was a gamble she was bound to lose. And so, eventually, she lost.

There would be no negotiating that loss. She would stand for none. To bargain now would mean to make a lie out of all the values and choices that had brought her to this point. She had not given them up for Gérard’s warmth, and she would not give them up for Lena’s.

But unlike after Gérard, after Lena there was nothing left to be sacrificed to these beliefs anymore. Widowmaker was a self-imposed identity, one that overlaid and overshadowed what the world used to know as Amélie Lacroix. And she couldn’t tear Widowmaker down like Amélie Lacroix had been torn down, couldn’t use the salvageable bricks to build another self. Without an act like that, she had nothing to combat another person-shaped hole in her life. And without a counterbalance to that loss, every night she had to spend alone now found her drowning in doubt.

And soon, too soon, Lena had another woman on her arm. That, also, had to be expected; half of London’s population probably had her poster in their living rooms, and toasted it with a cuppa every afternoon.

It was not a surprise. But it cut, and cut deeply, to know how easily she was replaced.

If Reaper had noticed anything off about her, he didn’t say. McCree and Shimada did not care enough to notice. Sombra knew, of course, and had known all along, but other than quiet sympathy and a brief, singular attempt at getting Widow to talk about it—an attempt that had made her feelings on the matter no clearer to either of them—she allowed Widowmaker to maintain her dignity and her silence.

But what had cut the most was not the loss of Lena’s warmth, it was not the uncertainty whether the choices that led to Widowmaker’s existence were the right ones, it was not Talon’s indifference or Sombra’s pity. What had cut the most was how in the short time she had spent away from Widowmaker’s influence, Lena had once again become a fountain of warmth.

Widowmaker could watch the one person she wanted most. She could shadow her every step. But for every time she had ever basked in Lena’s warmth, she had sapped it until Lena had no more to give, not enough even for herself.

And it cut to know that Widowmaker’s mere touch destroyed the only thing she could not be without.

There was nothing to be done, now, except to finally see to the duties she had neglected for so long. She was Widowmaker. She was an agent of Talon. She had an assignment, and that assignment was to eliminate Overwatch agent Lena Oxton, callsign Tracer.

It would be so much easier to only think of her as Tracer, now. But Widowmaker knew that it was Lena’s indomitable spirit that had led to and guaranteed the existence of Tracer. And she knew that unlike in her own case, Tracer and Lena were not a dynasty of identities inhabiting the same body.

She had wondered, once, how loudly Lena’s fall would echo, how deep the ripples would be. Now she knew they would be deep enough to erode her own existence.

~*~

It was a warm day, and the first day off in quite a while for Lena and Emily both, so they had decided to enjoy it together. They were not the only ones, either; there was a bit of a crowd in the old town and in the park, but Lena didn’t mind, and Emily didn’t mind enough to ask for a different destination.

With the two of them having been kept apart for a few weeks now, courtesy of a mission, Tracer’s mouth didn’t close for any longer than it took her to inhale. Emily didn’t mind that, either; she liked listening, and Lena always had a half dozen stories ready, new and old alike, that she told with animated passion.

“—and at this point, psh psh psh, fire from all sides, I’m telling you, love, I thought I was gonna get my tail on fire, or start screaming, or both,” Tracer gave a peal of laughter as she recounted the battle. Her eyes slid through their surroundings in her usual way, and suddenly she did a double-take. “Ooh. Ice cream. Now what do you say, Em, if not for the simply suffocating hot weather, wouldn’t ice cream be fitting for such a talented storyteller?”

“Hmm... I suppose today does deserve a celebration,” Emily conceded with faux seriousness.

“Now that’s simply impeccable logic, love, smart and beautiful, not to mention charming, almost as charming as yours truly, I knew you hold my heart for a reason.” Tracer winked at her. “Where was I?”

Emily couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “At shooting down an Omnic fighter and taking its place in the wing.”

~*~

It was a warm day, and Widowmaker was about to make it herald an ice age of the heart for the entirety of Overwatch.

She knew that Lena cared, and cared deeply, for her teammates. Some of them were like a found family, even, particularly the ones that had yanked her from her nightmares and anchored the ground under her feet. And now that Widowmaker knew Lena’s warmth so intimately, she was certain all that care and devotion was mutual in every single case.

To kill Tracer would be to assassinate the heart and soul of Overwatch. Without a doubt, Pharah and the war-worn shade of a human that was Seventy-Six would keep its corpse running for a while, but there would be no breathing it back to life again if Tracer was gone, and gone for good.

Widowmaker clicked her visor to slide over her eyes. Lena was grinning in the scope, talking excitedly about something, waving her hands about as if recreating a dogfight to her adoring audience of one, the red-haired girl she was dating.

She was about to put her finger on the sniper rifle’s trigger when something occurred to her.

If Lena needed the chronal accelerator to experience time like other people knew it, and taking the device from her would reduce her presence to random appearances she regarded as haunting the area quite like a ghost would, did it mean that detaching the accelerator from Lena’s dead body would release the corpse into the currents of time to be spat out and devoured again just as randomly, as a more literal ghost?

If there was anything that would demoralize Overwatch as a whole more than killing their heart and soul, it would be making sure they could never say goodbye. If they attempted to recover Lena’s body for a proper burial, it would sink funds and manpower that would otherwise be used against Talon. If they refrained from such an attempt, they would have to live with knowing they had abandoned her, given up on the one person that would never give up on any of them. And with impossible to predict, therefore avoid, sightings of her mutilated corpse as a reminder of their faithlessness.

And if there was anything worse than a sudden death, it was a slow one that devastated all it touched before it took its target.

Widowmaker felt a smile pull at her lips. Finally, a way to reclaim the hunt.

She had sincerely done her best to kill Tracer before, and failed on every occasion. Now, however, she knew her prey so much more intimately—she knew not only Tracer, but Lena. And to get Lena where she wanted her, Widowmaker would have to make her careless.

The crosshair slid from Lena to the red-haired girl holding her hand. Widowmaker clicked her tongue in displeasure, knowing it wouldn’t do; anger, grief, and thirst for vengeance would only give Tracer focus.

What would take the focus she already had, however, was fear.

Widowmaker looked up from the scope, swept their surroundings. It wasn’t long before her eyes narrowed, spotting the perfect opportunity, and she loaded explosive ammunition into her rifle.

The unsuspecting two below have just bought ice cream, and were headed towards the park, about to walk past a fountain that was surrounded by a flock of pigeons.

Just a little... bit... closer...

In her endless leaps and bounds, Lena had performed one sudden movement too many, too close to the fountain; the birds rose into the air, and Widowmaker pulled the trigger.

The gunshot echoed over rooftops like a thunderbolt. Widowmaker moved her scope just in time to watch Lena’s eyes widen in realization, then colour drain from her face when fear hit her like a hammer, all from behind the curtain of tiny shreds of feathers drifting through the air. The girl by her side was turning to her, no doubt to ask what had just happened. Before she could finish the sentence, Lena had both legs braced; she threw one arm over the redhead’s shoulders, and yanked even as she leapt, both of them disappearing in a flash of blue light, taking them out of open space.

They were out of sight before Lena’s dropped ice cream cone hit the ground.

Widowmaker smiled to herself and covered the rifle’s scope. That would do for today.

~*~

Back in the relative safety of Emily’s flat, the tenant herself sat by the kitchen table, while Tracer paced the length of the room like a caged animal.

“Lena, talk to me,” Emily urged softly. “What happened back there? Do you have any ideas?”

Tracer shook her head. “Don’t need ideas, love. That gunshot, that timing and aim—could’ve only been Widowmaker.”

“The Talon agent you’ve been seeing before we met?”

“One and the same.” Tracer pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t know what possessed me, really, it’s been a bloody terrible idea all around.”

“Hope, way I heard you tell it, hope that she wasn’t all gone yet.”

“And maybe she isn’t all gone, no, but I can’t go about bringing her back if she doesn’t want to come back.” Tracer wiped a hand over her face. “And she’s good with most of her being gone, way it looks. Smart, skilled, and dangerous, that one.”

Emily reached to take Tracer’s hand, preventing her from pacing any longer. “Everyone has a nightmare ex, Lena.”

“Em, not everyone’s nightmare ex makes daily use of a high-powered rifle with a sniper attachment!” Tracer screamed in her face. Seeing her girlfriend recoil at her tone was enough to make her stop, take a deeper breath, squeeze lightly on Emily’s hand. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have raised my voice, not at you. I’m just—” she put her face in both hands for a moment, shaking. “Widowmaker is the best sniper Talon has, or ever had. If she wants you dead, I’m— I don’t— I don’t know if I can protect you.”

Emily touched Tracer’s shoulders, pulled her into a light hug. “Lena. Think, love. I don’t doubt she’s as skilled as you make her sound. So had she wanted me dead, I would already be dead! We were right there, in no hurry, and we didn’t suspect a thing. She couldn’t ask for a better chance, and what she did with it was make certain there wouldn’t be another like it, not ever. If she wanted to shoot me dead, she could have done it right then and there, so why did she shoot the birdie instead?”

Tracer looked up at that, a small frown forming as she searched for an answer.

“She doesn’t want me dead,” Emily said softly. “She wants you afraid for me.”

“And she’s doing a bloody good job, as usual,” Tracer muttered, but breathed a little more easily, and wrapped her arms tightly around Emily. “Damn the French, always at some unnerving scheme or other...”

Emily found herself laughing. With Lena starting to run her mouth like usual, she had to be calming down. “Insidious as ever, the French are.”

Tracer sniffed, took a deep breath, pulled away from the hug to touch Emily’s cheek, pressed their foreheads together. “I shouldn’t have dropped my ice cream.”

“What flavour was it?” Emily asked, recognizing that Lena was turning to a safer subject in an effort to calm herself down.

“Mint chocolate chip. Two scoops.”

“How about you get us a box?” Emily suggested. “We can stay in for the rest of the day, maybe do a movie marathon.”

Tracer pulled away to give her a searching look, and Emily placed a hand over the one Lena was still holding to her cheek.

“I won’t move from here, love. Promise.”

Tracer fidgeted for a moment yet, torn, but eventually gritted her teeth and nodded. “Okay. We can order something out for dinner. I’ll go grab the snacks, so you pick the movies. Though I draw the line at Indiana Jones.”

“How’s nature documentaries sound?”

Tracer nodded. “Long as none of them are about spiders.”

~*~

_{Reaper spotted. D.Va, engaging._

_{Roger, D.Va. Reinhardt, move to reinforce.}_

_{Affirmative, Pharah.}_

_{Hanzo spotted. Symmetra, falling back to fortify.}_

_{Roger, Symmetra. I’m en route to your location.}_

Tracer looked up as Pharah rose into the sky. Moments later, a very distinctive gunshot rang out, staggering her in mid-air and forcing her back to the ground.

_{Pharah to all: shooter on the roof, stay on your toes!}_

Tracking the shot back, an all-too-familiar, lithe figure was moving fast along a rooftop, towards a better sniper perch. Tracer tapped her comm.

“Widowmaker spotted. Tracer, giving chase.”

_{Roger, Tracer. Try to keep her off our backs for a while.}_

“Affirmative, Pharah.”

Now if that bloody French though she could keep gunning for her, her mates, and now her girlfriend, she had another thing coming.

Taking a fast run-up, Tracer leapt up in a blink to grab onto a small balcony, bounced from there in another accelerator-assisted jump, landed on a roof and broke into a run again. She spotted Widowmaker again, headed east, towards where Rein and Hana were going up against Reaper—

Another gunshot, and Tracer screamed as a blast of pain slammed into her shoulder, the impact throwing her off the rooftop. She fell down, hard, slamming into a balcony’s railing with the back of her accelerator, tumbling down over her injured shoulder. She tried to move through the blinding pain, reach for her comm again.

“This is Tracer,” she forced between coughs. “I’m hit. It’s bad.”

Whatever she was going to say next apparently wasn’t meant to be spoken—her jaws clenched as a boot came hard against the back of her head, slamming her face into the cobblestones to smash her goggles and stun her for one critical moment. Then she shrieked, right into the comm, as a rifle butt hammered into the back of her shin, shattering both bones there.

Widowmaker repeated that treatment for Tracer’s other leg; even if she managed to blink away now, she couldn’t run away. By some chance, or the last shreds of her incredible resilience, Tracer was still conscious; Widowmaker’s boot found home in her solar plexus, folding her in half, then slammed against her injured shoulder to turn Tracer to her back. When the tortured haze cleared a little from Tracer’s eyes, Widowmaker levelled her rifle at Tracer’s chest. A sniper round at this range would be devastating—there would be little to take home anymore. It saved her the trouble of destroying the chronal accelerator separately.

“Adieu.”

Tracer closed her eyes. “Win, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Emily, Ang, Fareeha...”

Widowmaker narrowed her eyes at the litany of names leaving Tracer’s lips. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out a patter of running footsteps approaching from her left, and Widowmaker turned on her heel to smash the butt of her rifle against the intruder. She had expected Pharah, or Genji, maybe—it was not the gallop that would herald Winston, at least.

She had not expected an entirely unimposing redhead, falling hard with an oof.

“You?”

“Emily!” Tracer moaned from the ground, a new edge of panic to her voice.

The red-haired girl was picking herself up, if unbelievably slowly, showing just how much she had no idea what she was doing, and scrambled to Tracer’s side. Or, more truthfully, to shield Tracer.

Widowmaker smoothly pointed the rifle at her, and Emily froze in place, open hands lifted up to show she was unarmed.

“You mean nothing to me,” Widowmaker said coldly. “Move, and I’ll let you live.”

“I can’t do that.” Emily took a deep breath. “You’re not going to hurt her anymore.”

“Em, just run,” Tracer rasped from the ground, even as Widowmaker laughed in Emily’s face. “Get out of here.”

“No,” the redhead said firmly.

“Em!”

“No.” Emily tore her eyes from the muzzle of Widowmaker’s gun to look at the sniper’s face. “There’s no other place I can be right now.”

Widowmaker scoffed at that. “Living by a creed, are we?”

Emily swallowed, but stood a little more straight. “Yes, I do believe I am, yes.”

“Is it worth giving your life for?”

“I’ve already chosen to give up the life I’ve known for it,” Emily countered easily. “Haven’t you?”

Widowmaker blinked at that, taken aback.

And then she was looking into a mirror, face pale with the terror of what she had resolved to do, acutely aware of her own mortality and lack of skill to tip the scales in her favour, a single slip-up meaning the death of what she believed in and success meaning the death of her life as she knew it, holding her head high despite marching towards a violent end of her sense of self, clutching one of Gérard’s combat knives too tightly in a sweaty palm.

Left hand falling from the rifle, Widowmaker reached out to touch the top of her head, gently ruffle her hair, keeping her motions very slow and fluid, as if afraid of scaring her away by moving too suddenly. And then, the illusion was gone, the redhead before her wide-eyed and frozen in place like a bird waiting for a viper’s venomous bite.

Widowmaker stood unmoving for a moment longer—then, with no explanation, she took off into the night.

Emily let out a breath she’d been holding. “I’m not dead,” she said shakily, a frantic note of disbelief in her voice. Gunfire was building up again in the distance, along with loud booming noises, some of them measured like giant footfalls, some irregular like explosions.

“Em,” there was a breathless rasp behind her, and she turned on her heel, dropped to her knees by the brutalized form at her feet.

“Lena!”

“Did she—” Tracer broke off with a tiny whimper of pain when she was pulled into Emily’s lap, head in the crook of her elbow. “Did she hurt you?”

“Did she hurt _me?_ ” Emily’s voice broke as she wiped a trail of blood from over Tracer’s eye, where a shard of her goggles had cut the skin, and glanced over Tracer’s deformed ribcage, shattered collarbone, legs limp at impossible angles, blood seeping from her torn sleeve and her mouth. “Lena, look at you!”

“Emily,” Tracer forced again, every sound she made now obviously taking a lot from her. “Did she—”

“No. No, I’m fine. My shoulder hurts, is all.” Emily then froze when the blue light illuminating both their faces flickered, and Tracer squeezed her eyes shut. “Lena, your accelerator—”

“It’s cracked. It’s cracked.” Tracer was shaking now, tears falling from her eyes, trailing down into her hair. “Em, don’t let me go.”

“I won’t, love, I won’t,” Emily promised desperately, pressing a hand to the device to hold it in one piece. “Lena, we have to get you help.”

“Don’t let me go,” Tracer whispered again. “Not again, not like this, please... please...”

“Lena?” Emily touched her face. “Open your eyes. Oi. Look at me, love.”

She earned no response.

Emily shifted her hand to slightly over Tracer’s mouth to check for the warm wisp of her breathing, then took a deep breath herself, and started screaming for help.

~*~

“Widow, how much longer is this going to take you?” Reaper grumbled in his reverberating voice. “It’s just one assignment, and Tracer’s just one woman.”

“If I killed Tracer, Overwatch would have simply buried her,” Widowmaker riposted without batting an eyelash. “Now that she’s maimed, Overwatch will sink resources into her recovery—resources that would have otherwise been used against Talon. She’s one of their top agents. They will spare no expense.”

“Pshaw,” McCree muttered around his cigar. “You bullshit like the best of them, but just admit it. You’re getting soft, Widowmaker.”

A split second later, he wheezed as a pale, long-fingered hand crushed his throat and lifted him off his feet.

“Excusez-moi?” Widowmaker said calmly, even as the fresh dressing on the forearm she was holding McCree up with started to slowly soak through with red.

Sombra sighed, crossing her arms. “You are like a cat that’s never been hungry. Quit playing with your food, araña!” She then waited for Reaper to look the other way, and gave Widowmaker a shit-eating grin and two thumbs-up.

“Enough,” Reaper growled. “Widow, put him down and get that wound redressed. Jesse, if you’ve got the time to be giving her crap, then you’ve got the time to match her scores. Sombra, get on decrypting Overwatch’s new code, we need to know their next move. We’ll regroup now, and get them good next time.”

~*~

Emily hadn’t been in a lot of emergency rooms before, but even in her limited experience, the only thing out of ordinary with this one was the company.

Winston sat on the floor—no chair that wasn’t custom-made for him could bear his weight—and kept idly cleaning his glasses, as if he could wipe away the ugliness of the world with that simple habit alone. Fareeha stood still like a statue, back rigid and shoulders squared, feet apart and hands folded at the small of her back. There were a few others whose names Emily didn’t know, too—a mountain of a man with a bushy beard and a wide scar over his left eye, who sat unmoving and unreadable, his companions that much more tense for his quietness; an Indian woman with one arm the matte grey of a prosthetic and a blue-tinted visor over her eyes, inelegantly perched on a chair and rocking gently back and forth, back and forth, her face calm only for as long as she kept the motion up; a Korean girl fresh out of her teens, two streaks of pink warpaint on each cheek, her back against a wall and legs stretched out along two more chairs than the one she was sitting on, who kept playing some old platformer on a retro Gameboy, but the frequent glances she’d steal towards the operating theatre’s door made it all too obvious that she was merely keeping herself occupied.

All five of them were there when Emily’s frantic screaming for help brought both sides of the nearby battle down on Tracer and herself.

Fareeha had found them first, dropping from the sky like an ancient god, opening the golden visor of her helmet to give Emily a shocked look, the question of _what are you doing here?_ dying on her tongue when she saw Tracer.

_“Her accelerator’s cracked,” Emily managed through tears, and watched Fareeha’s face freeze into a mask of horror._

_“No. Not again.” Fareeha’s hands came up to the device next to Emily’s. “Not like this.”_

She had shaken it off and started barking orders into her comm seconds after, bringing the hulking armour-clad giant with a warhammer the size of Emily’s little car to deploy a translucent shield between them and a building up barrage of shotgun shells and, inexplicably, arrows. Seconds later, the distant measured thumping sound had been explained as a bipedal mecha sprinted towards them from behind the corner and immediately laid down cover fire, chasing two of the Talon agents away. Following closely was the bronze-skinned woman, the one who was now curled up, her chin rested on her knees and her artificial arm around her legs, the one who was now rocking back and forth, back and forth, the slightly haunted look in her eyes building up whenever she tried to stop.

The longer Emily looked at her, the harder it was not to take the motion up herself, so she opted for hiding her face in both hands instead.

_“Symmetra, we have to evacuate them, now.” Fareeha was saying while Emily curled around Lena’s unconscious form, instinctively trying to shield her from the battle raging behind the force field generated from the knight’s left vambrace._

_The Overwatch agent with a blue-tinted visor over her eyes nodded, drew light from her artificial palm, and started shaping it with her organic one. “In ten. Nine. Eight.”_

_Fareeha’s hands had moved to Emily’s then, placing them firmly on Lena’s damaged chronal accelerator. “Emily, listen to me. I’m going to take her now, but I need you to hold her accelerator in place until we get her to Winston; he’s got a spare one.”_

_“He carries a spare with him?” Emily repeated, latching onto the one bit of information that wasn’t immediately horrifying._

_Fareeha nodded. “Ever since Doomfist.”_

_“Teleporter active,” the agent beside them said. “Pharah, the path is open.”_

Cradled by Fareeha, made only more imposing with the bulky combat suit, Lena had seemed smaller and more defenceless than ever, an impression only intensified by three broken limbs, bruised face, shattered goggles, and bright red foam forming at her lips. Winston and Angela had worn the same look of sheer horror as Fareeha, and slammed down on it in favour of taking action that could save Tracer’s existence and life just as quickly and forcefully as Fareeha.

_“Lay her down,” Angela commanded, the wings of her combat medic suit spread and alight with gold that had Lena breathing a little more easily, hands unstrapping the still-whole clasps of the damaged chronal accelerator, but holding it securely in place. “Fareeha, take her shoulders. Winston, ready the spare, we’ll replace them on the count of three. Ready? One, two, three.”_

_They moved in perfectly synchronized tandem, barely a second passing between Angela pulling the broken device away and Winston putting the spare one against Lena’s chest—a shiver ran through her broken form as the bright blue ripple that threatened to take her away was stabilized with the fully functional accelerator, but she didn’t wake up._

_“Good. She needs more than a field surgery, now; I’m getting her back to the Forward Operations Base.”_

_Even as Fareeha confirmed, Angela looked up at Emily, and beckoned to her. “Come.”_

And so, Emily found herself in an emergency room, surrounded by Overwatch agents, waiting for hours as the woman she loved was fighting for her life on an operating table.

She didn’t think it was at all possible for Fareeha to stand any more straight, and yet that was the motion that caused Emily to look up and see that the SURGERY lamp above the operating theatre’s door wasn’t lit anymore.

The whole group scrambled to their feet, the Korean girl carelessly tossing the Gameboy away and the Indian woman uncoiling from the tight ball she had pulled herself into in one smooth motion, the bearded man rising like a forgotten giant awoken from stone and Winston picking himself up on all four limbs, all forming around Fareeha.

It seemed like hours before the doors slid open and Doctor Ziegler walked out, deep shadows under her eyes and an exhausted slant to her shoulders.

“She’ll make it,” Angela said simply, and paused as a collective sigh of relief rippled through the group, Fareeha finally relaxing and Emily swaying on her feet as her knees went soft; Winston’s large hand immediately holding her arm was the only reason she didn’t fall down. “She’s going to need over a dozen secondary and tertiary surgeries, and we’ll be keeping her in a chemical coma for up to a week; recovery and rehabilitation will take her months, and even with her incredible resilience it could be a year before she’s combat-ready again.”

“Any permanent damage?” Fareeha spoke up. “Need of implants, prostheses?”

Angela shook her head. “Unlikely to go any further than surgical reconstruction of her left shoulder joint, both legs, and right lung, the bulk of which has already been completed.” She then stepped closer to Emily, touched her shoulder. “She’s asleep, but you can see her now.”

For a moment, there was nothing Emily wanted more than to say yes. Then she took another look at Angela and realized the medic had been on her feet through the day, the battle, and the harrowing surgery that had stretched well into the night. So in the end, she shook her head. “If Lena’s going to be asleep for a week, I can see her tomorrow morning.”

Angela gave her a grateful smile. “Tomorrow morning, then.”

The group then started to disperse, Fareeha gently wrapping an arm around Angela’s shoulders and leading her away. Winston, in the meantime, stayed with Emily.

“There’s a cot in my office if you’d like to stay the night.”

“Thank you,” Emily said hoarsely, on the brink of tears of relief. Lena was going to live; she’d been terribly hurt, but she was going to live.

“Come on. I think we all need to get some rest.”

In the far end of the corridor, Angela had to pause and lean against the wall, unsteady on her feet. Fareeha responded by lifting her in a bridal carry, and all Angela could do was to wrap her arms around her wife’s neck; she would likely be asleep before making it to bed.

Emily shook her head, wiping her face with one hand. “You’re very kind, Winston, but I don’t think I can sleep without her like this.”

“I have her favourite plush sloth for when she sleeps over,” Winston offered. “Next best thing?”

That actually drew a small laugh from Emily. “Next best thing.”

~*~

“So...” Sombra cleared her throat, sitting down next to Widowmaker and placing an arm along the back of the mess seat, a slightly steaming mug in her other hand. “I thought you were actually gonna kill Tracer this time, maybe after that whole maiming thing. What went wrong?”

Widowmaker glared at her. Sombra’s response was to shake her head with a smirk.

“Don’t give me that look. I wouldn’t really care if it was all on you again, but you had me make sure the girlfriend was nearby, for all those weeping spouse and witness to the crime things. You wasted my time. I got the right to know what for. So spill.”

That bit was fair, at least, Widowmaker supposed. “It wasn’t about Tracer this time.”

“Yeah?” Sombra encouraged.

Widowmaker closed her eyes for a moment, resigning herself to the fact that Sombra wouldn’t leave until she got her answer. “It was the other girl.”

Sombra gave a hum, drinking from her mug, then licked the foam from her lips. Hot cocoa. What a child. “You know, araña, I understand that girls—Dios mio, am I right—but you gotta draw a line in the sand somewhere.”

Widowmaker’s lips curved slightly in a grimace of disgust. “Not like that, you buffoon. It was—she’s a civilian. She didn’t even know how to fall when I knocked her down. And she got up and... talked to me as if we were out for coffee... she just stood there. She didn’t even shake. She faced down a trained, experienced, professional assassin, with nothing to give her a fighting chance—”

“You don’t have to say any more,” Sombra cut her off, a soft and understanding note to her voice that had Widowmaker clenching her fists in shame. Moments later, the hacker’s arm she had along the mess seat was around Widowmaker’s back. “Got more in common than a name and taste in women, eh?”

Widowmaker swallowed, hard, against the sudden tightness to her throat. “Sombra.”

“Hm?”

“Why did you agree to help me?”

“Truth for truth, huh? That’s fine. I can work with that.” Sombra’s hand rubbed gently across her shoulders, and Widowmaker gritted her teeth against the need to scream from how much she craved closeness and comfort like that, how much she hated being undone like she was by a gesture so small. “I helped because I look up to you, araña. You stand by what you believe in, and you stand by it every minute of every day; you choose your principles over anything and everything, up to and including your safety, your happiness, even your pride. I hope I can be that tough someday. And it made me happy that you came with this to me instead of like, Gabe or Hanzo. So I won’t tell anyone.” Sombra leaned closer, lowered her voice. “And if you ever decide to ditch Talon, come to me first so we can hightail outta here together, capiche? They can’t chase down both of us at the same time. And I’d hate to have your crosshairs on my back, or you in mine.”

Widowmaker closed her eyes, sagging a little under the sickening tide of anguish and defeat, devouring through her chest like a wildfire, the weight of Gérard’s combat knife still strapped to her boot suddenly unbearable, like an iron ball chained to her ankle, pulling her down into darkness and cold. “Sombra. Please leave.”

Sombra squeezed her shoulder lightly, before pulling away as she rose from the mess seat, taking her stupid hot cocoa with her. “Ever need anything, you know where to find me.”


End file.
